American sounding rocket. Single stage vehicle consisting of a Hopi III and an unpowered dart.

The second stage was an inert dart, 0.035 meters in diameter and 1.128 meters long that contained aluminized Mylar chaff and the payload ejection system. At first stage burnout (2.4 seconds), differential drag caused separation of the first stage from the dart. The dart then coasted to an apogee of 85 kilometers. The payload ejection from the dart was designed to occur at approximately T+ 135 seconds. The Hopi-Dart was launched from a rail attached to an I-Beam structure.

An FPS-16 radar skin tracked the Dart and then the chaff payload from apogee to an altitude of 70 km or loss of signal. Data were obtained by radar printout of time, elevation and azimuth angles, and slant range position, and also by reducing the radar plotting board which was a graphical location of the chaff by altitude, time, and position. Only three of this type system were fired at Cape Kennedy.

Wallops Island Small NASA launch site for sounding rocket launches and occasional Scout launches to orbit. Air launches are conducted from the Drop Zone Wallops Island, 37.00 N 72.0 W. With the last orbital launch in 1985 and the decline in sounding rocket launches, Wallops fell into near-disuse as a launch center. Its fortunes revised with the establishment of Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in 2005 and orbital launches resumed in 2010. More...

Cape Canaveral America's largest launch center, used for all manned launches. Today only six of the 40 launch complexes built here remain in use. Located at or near Cape Canaveral are the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, used by NASA for Saturn V and Space Shuttle launches; Patrick AFB on Cape Canaveral itself, operated the US Department of Defense and handling most other launches; the commercial Spaceport Florida; the air-launched launch vehicle and missile Drop Zone off Mayport, Florida, located at 29.00 N 79.00 W, and an offshore submarine-launched ballistic missile launch area. All of these take advantage of the extensive down-range tracking facilities that once extended from the Cape, through the Caribbean, South Atlantic, and to South Africa and the Indian Ocean. More...

Tonopah Sounding rocket and test vehicle launch site. Conducted launches in support of US nuclear weapons development programs. Known to have been used for 93 launches from 1957 to 1986, reaching up to 270 kilometers altitude. More...